Research reveals a network of potential symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (Posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD) is the most common psychological problem that occurs in individuals after experiencing traumatic events.
a large number of traditional psychopathological studies of PTSD are based on subvariate models, which examine the potential symptom dimensional structure of PTSD through factor analysis and other methods, and explore the influence factors of these different symptom dimensions and their association with other mental health factors.
with the introduction of psychopathological network theory into the field of mental health research, there have been a lot of research on PTSD symptom network in recent years.
these studies focus on the mesh structure of the dynamic correlation between the different symptoms of PTSD.
these two research orientations complement each other in content, but they also have many methodological limitations.
and network models are theoretically based on their different assumptions about mental disorders, but they are not mutually exclusive.
there is much evidence that network structures that affect each other between potential symptom dimensions and symptom dimensions may exist simultaneously for complex mental disorders such as PTSD.
the study of the potential symptom dimension network of PTSD can combine these two perspectives to make up for their respective methodological deficiencies and provide a basis for a more comprehensive understanding of the psychopathological characteristics of PTSD.
Wang Li Research Group of the Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, based on previous research on the potential symptom dimensional structure of PTSD in adult earthquake survivors, explored the network structure of these symptom dimensions, estimated the subvariate network model among 1,196 adult earthquake survivors, and verified the estimated PTSD symptom dimensional network in a repetitive sample of children and adolescents with mixed trauma types.
results show that the submarine variable network model has a better model fit in both samples than the traditional subvarivarial model.
in the network of potential symptom dimensions of PTSD, there is the strongest link between break-in and avoidance dimensions.
there is also a strong association of symptoms between externalized behavior and negative emotional dimensions, anxiety arousal and mental pain arousal dimensions.
study of the dimension center of each symptom found that the externalization behavior has the highest centrality in the PTSD potential symptom dimension network.
the study sheds light on the potential symptoms of PTSD dimension network structure.
results support the existence of both potential symptom dimension structures and causal network structures between symptom dimensions, suggesting that more attention needs to be paid to dynamic interactions at the symptom dimension level rather than at the single symptom level in future studies.
results also suggest that more attention needs to be paid to the associations between specific symptom dimensions in PTSD interventions, such as the link between break-in and avoidance symptoms.
results were published in European Journal of Psychotraumatology.
research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Education's Key Research Base for Humanities and Social Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Key Project on Foreign Cooperation and the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.
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